Free Money Finance: My On-Going Battle with Comcast

It all started with a letter from Comcast in July:

Dear Valued Comcast Customer:

Effective August 16, 2011, a subscription to Digital Starter of a higher digital tier of video service will be required to receive the Sports Entertainment Package. Our records indicate that you do not currently subscribe to at least Digital Starter.

It went on from there, but the basic idea was that I either needed to increase my service package or my access to the Fox Soccer Channel (one of the main reasons we have cable anyway) would be cut off. Since my annual contract was up in a couple weeks, I needed to negotiate the entire package anyway.

But before we get to that, here's what I've gone through with Comcast the past two years:

If you don't want to read all of those, here's the summary:

• I got Comcast cable on a one-year promotion.


• They messed up, they made it right, they messed up again, they made it right again.


• As a result, I ended up with the equivalent of the Digital Starter package though I was paying Digital Economy rates (and technically was a Digital Economy customer).

Through all this I had been paying $30 to $35 per month for a good number of channels, HD/DVR, and the Sports Entertainment Package (which we buy for the Fox Soccer Channel but has the pleasant side effect of giving us the NFL Channel and Red Zone too.)

So I began the painful process by contacting Comcast online via Twitter -- telling them I wasn't pleased with the change that was making my Sports Entertainment Package go away. They told me they would have someone contact me the next day. No one did. And they didn't the next day either. So I contacted them. They said someone would call me the next day. They didn't. Then, finally, they called -- several days after our original contact. Ugh.

I talked to the guy on the other end of the line, told him my position (I wanted the soccer channel and wanted to see what offers they had available.) He immediately went into sales mode, telling me how they had GREAT deals when you combined TV, internet, and phone services with them. I told him I wasn't really interested -- that I simply wanted cable from them. He gave me the following choices:

• Stick with Digital Economy (technically my current service). This would cost $55 per month, I would lose many channels (since the free ones they had been giving me because they messed up would be going away), and I wouldn't get the Sports Entertainment Package (no soccer.) I would get the HD/DVR though.


• Move up to Digital Starter. This tier would replace what I currently had entirely. That's the good news. The bad news was that the cost was $85 per month. Really? Yep, that's the going, "regular" rate.


• Move up even higher to Digital Preferred. This would get me everything I had PLUS more channels (and more in HD.) The cost was $64 per month for six months (on promotion.)

As you might imagine, I was not pleased with these options. The first choice didn't even get me what I wanted (while increasing my costs $20 per month nonetheless!). The second was way too expensive -- I was prepared to pay a bit more (like $50 per month for what I currently had), but not $85. The final one was the best price/features deal, but it put me on promotion and I knew I'd have to fight it out again in six months. There was no good answer.

He and I had a "discussion" at that point and it got a bit heated. During the conversation he kept bringing up the great savings they had if I would add my internet and phone to the package. I was not about to do that. Why would I want to put my two other services into the get-you-in-with-a-good-price-then-jack-it-way-up-in-a-year game? No way.

I told him I'd call him back with my decision. After considering my various options over the next week -- and the costs, time and hassle factors associated with each -- I took a page out of Congress' playbook and kicked the can down the road. I took the Digital Preferred package. We LOVE it BTW, but I'm afraid it will cost $200 a month when it comes up for renewal in February.

Since then, I asked all of you what you pay for entertainment services to see if what I was paying (and potentially could pay) was out of line. It wasn't. Many of you pay much more, though some pay much less. What I got out of that post was that there are various needs/wants in entertainment and various ways to satisfy those needs. In addition, options are changing quickly so what may be true now may not be true in a year -- and options that don't exist now may exist in a year.

Anyway, here are some thoughts from me on this issue:

Pay-TV providers offer those great deals upfront because most people will continue to pay the bill as it rises, said Bob Sullivan, MSNBC's Red Tape columnist. "They count on our laziness," Sullivan said. "They know we hate little things about change, what economists call switching costs, like losing track of where our favorite programs are on the dial. Is ESPN 206 or 35? . . . Even the most vigilant among us let it go for a few months before we complain. All this is baked into their business model."

• I would love to see a pay-per-channel model since we don't use 98% of the channels we have, but I don't think that will happen until the cable companies have their backs up against the wall.


• My plan is to watch the Comcast offers and try to get another TV-only one when/if it appears. Once they get off the Triple Play offer (which goes through September, I believe), I hope they will get a bit more aggressive on the single-service offers. We'll see.


• Another option I've considered is simply turning off the TV completely and "going dark." Many of you do this and if my options are limited in February, I might too.


• Comcast's day is coming where they're going to reap what they've sown. Options for entertainment viewership are growing by leaps and bounds and there's going to come a day when most people can get most of what they want in other ways. And when they can, they will leave the cable companies in droves. Now if those companies hadn't had poor service and hadn't tried to charge an arm and a leg for their products (with little to no competition), then perhaps more customers would stay. But they won't hang around given how Comcast has dealt with its customers.


• Is it any wonder that Comcast was voted the Worst Company in America for 2010? And if you think they must have improved since they didn't win in 2011, let me put it this way: it took BP flooding the entire Gulf of Mexico with oil to knock Comcast off its "worst company" perch (BP defeated Comcast in the Final Four). That speaks pretty poorly of Comcast IMO.


• Then again, this could sound like whining (which it is, in part.) Comcast is allowed to charge whatever prices it wants and deal with customers however it wants, right? Then I have the right as a consumer to decide whether or not I want to pay their rates and deal with them. The mere fact that I'm currently with them says that they are offering more value to me than the cost I'm paying. Otherwise, why would I be a subscriber? So maybe I should just shut up, huh? I could/should, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun. ;-)

That's where I currently stand. I'll let you know when things change and the success (or lack of it) I have when the time comes around.

P.S. I found this post after I wrote this piece. The advice on how to save on cable costs won't work for me based on what I want to watch, but it may help some readers.

Source: http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2011/09/my-on-going-battle-with-comcast.html

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